Massachusetts Advocates for Children

🎊 The State Conference Committee is poised to decide if the PROTECT Act includes protections for schools!

🚨Below is one easy thing YOU can do NOW to make sure the final bill includes protections for immigrant students and staff in schools.

1) Go to tinyurl.com/ProtectActSchools to instantly email your state legislators to urge them to advocate for school protections to the conference committee.

2) Share and spread the word. Forward this link to at least five other community members in your network.

We are pleased to share that our Legal Director Diana Santiago will receive this year’s Juvenile and Child Welfare Award from the Massachusetts Bar Association (MBA)! This award recognizes the outstanding contributions of legal professionals who advocate for youth in the juvenile and child welfare systems. Diana will be presented with the award at the MBA’s Juvenile and Child Welfare Conference on June 11 at UTEC in Lowell.

This year’s legal conference will focus on understanding developmental, neurodevelopmental and mental health conditions impacting youth. To register, visit https://www.massbar.org/events/cle-program?productId=10071.

Thank you to the MBA’s Juvenile & Child Welfare Section Council for this acknowledgement of Diana’s tireless work to protect the rights of youth across the Commonwealth!

Thank you to the Senate for passing the PROTECT Act, including protections relating to ICE arrests on school grounds and parent notification measures.

We especially want to thank Senate President Karen E. Spilka, State Senator Cindy Friedman, Chair Michael Rodrigues, and Senator Jason Lewis along with members of the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus who worked tirelessly behind the scenes.

Now on to the Conference committee to ensure these provisions are in the final bill!

🎊The Senate PROTECT Act bill S.3072 has included stronger requirements for schools, including mandatory response plans in districts and a prohibition on immigration enforcement on school grounds without judicial warrant. This is a HUGE win!

🚨But we still have time to secure additional protections for immigrant students, educators, and families in schools, including protecting student information.

Help us secure these critical protections!

🔷 Sign on to our petition at tinyurl.com/44jbkwxj. Our priority deadline is tomorrow 5/6 at noon. We will submit the petition with names and city/town of residence to Senate leadership tomorrow.

🔷 Share and spread the word. Forward this petition to at least five other community members in your network. We are almost at 300 names and are striving to get to 400!

🎊El proyecto de ley del Senado S.3072, la Ley PROTECT, ha incorporado requisitos importantes para las escuelas, incluyendo planes de respuesta obligatorios en los distritos y la prohibición de realizar acciones de control migratorio en las escuelas sin una orden judicial. ¡Esta es una victoria ENORME!

🚨Pero aún estamos a tiempo de asegurar protecciones adicionales para los estudiantes, educadores, y familias inmigrantes en las escuelas, incluida la protección de la información de los estudiantes.

¡Ayúdenos a asegurar estas protecciones fundamentales!

🔷 Firme nuestra petición en tinyurl.com/44jbkwxj. El plazo prioritario vence mañana, 6 de mayo, al mediodía. Entregaremos la petición con nombres y ciudades de residencia al liderazgo del Senado mañana.

🔷 Comparta y difunda el mensaje. Reenvíe esta petición a al menos otros cinco miembros de la comunidad dentro de su red de contactos.

Meet Eden Eguale, our Young Adult Leaders Fellow! Eden attends school in Brookline and joined our team earlier this year. Currently, she is supporting our parent trainings, helping families better understand education rights and key topics like transition.

Eden is eager to grow as an advocate for children facing barriers to learning, and we’re excited to see how her perspective will shape our work throughout the rest of her time at MAC. We’re so glad to have her on the team!

Our new blog post highlights recent changes to vocational school admissions.

The new rules for Career and Technical Education (CTE) admissions in Massachusetts reduce barriers for students with disabilities, students of color, English language learners, and low-income students. Admission is now based on a lottery system instead of allowing grades, teacher recommendations, and interviews to be used as selection criteria.

If your child is enrolling in vocational school, it’s important to learn about this new system. And for students with disabilities, ensuring full implementation of 504 or IEP plans will also be critical.

The right to a Free Appropriate Public Education applies to vocational schools too. If you have concerns about admissions practices or a student facing exclusion, please contact our Helpline at (617) 357-8431.

To learn about the new system, read the full blog post at www.massadvocates.org/news/vocational-school. Thank you to Brian Dezurik of MetroWest Legal Services for writing it!

Boston Public Schools is proposing cuts that would eliminate more than 100 classroom aides — staff who play a critical role in supporting students with disabilities and making inclusive classrooms possible.

Our Legal Director, Diana Santiago, spoke with the Globe about how this “will create a complete mismatch” between inclusion goals “and reality” as appropriately trained and supervised paraprofessionals are foundational for many disabled students to support their independence in general education settings.

As BPS works toward fully inclusive education by 2027, reducing essential support staff raises serious concerns about whether students with disabilities will receive the services they need to succeed. We are focused on advocating to ensure inclusion is a reality.

Boston Public Schools recently published procedural guidance to help school staff navigate one of the most urgent concerns immigrant families are facing in this moment. The guidance outlines steps for how staff should respond to ICE agents at school or during a field trip. It also requires schools to notify a student's parents or emergency contact if agents come asking for information or access to a student and directs schools to provide social and emotional support to students whose families have been separated due to ICE actions.

Our Legal Director, Diana Santiago, shared with the Globe that in particular, the activation of school-based supports for students directly impacted by ICE actions reflect an understanding of "the devastating impact of being separated from a parent, having a parent suddenly taken away from a student, that is going to impact that student deeply, including in the school setting."

This guidance is an important step forward, but important questions remain including how school staff will be trained in the protocols included in the guidance and what happens when ICE agents are present outside school buildings during drop-off and pick-up. MAC will keep advocating for clarity and safety for immigrant students and school staff.

Read the full article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/02/metro/bps-updated-guidelines-regarding-ice/

A recent report produced by a class of first year students from Northeastern University School of Law in partnership with MAC provided analysis of dozens of cases from 2024 and 2025 where Massachusetts schools failed to investigate bullying complaints in a timely manner or at all and how the state Problem Resolution System responded. The report also highlighted that students of color and students with disabilities were more likely to be victims of bullying.

These findings are a sobering reminder of how much work remains, even 15 years after Massachusetts passed a comprehensive anti-bullying law. Our Legal Director, Diana Santiago, spoke to GBH News about what needs to change. MAC is strategizing on how to use the findings from the report to address school bullying more effectively and work to prevent it altogether, because every child deserves to feel safe at school.

A heartfelt thank you to the Northeastern Law students and their professor, Elizabeth Bloom, who made this report possible!

https://www.wgbh.org/news/education-news/2026-03-31/dozens-of-school-districts-failing-to-investigate-bullying-complaints-report-finds

The House passed the PROTECT Act, a bill that limits interactions between state and local police with federal immigration enforcement and provides other important protections for the immigrant community. It also acknowledges the importance of considering immigration enforcement in school settings.

Thank you Speaker Mariano, Chairman Michlewitz, Leader Peisch, and Representative Reid and others for your leadership!